June 3/08 10:56 am - Ontario Provincial Track Championships

The tradition of outstanding performances continued at the 2008 Ontario Track Championships at the Forest City Velodrome in London, Ontario.

2008 was the 4th Championship run at the138m Velodrome and the finishing times put up by the athlete's, in every category, keeps getting faster and faster. Add to the speed, the skill level of all riders has gone through the roof. Confidence and experience makes for a great combination when trying to go faster.

The 2008 Championships were held over 2 days with an ability based Sprint and Kierin Tournament being contested on Saturday night. The 5 event Omnium competition was held in a marathon session Sunday. Racing started at 9am and continued past 7:30pm in order to make sure every competitor had the opportunity to complete each event and give it their best effort.

Riders qualified for their respective divisions on Saturday afternoon, with the head to head racing going late into the night. The fastest 10 sprinters made it into the "A" division, with 15 riders doing battle in the "B" & "C" groups..... We spoke to many riders over the weekend. It is unanimous that this format gives the best level of competition as all racers were paired with riders of their own ability. The difference in Qualifying in the "B" group was less than 1/2 second, and the "C" group was even closer at .4 of a second. This made for some very competitive racing and gave all the riders the practice needed to learn the skills of sprinting without getting pummelled by a much faster rider.

The most compelling race of the weekend was late Sunday afternoon. The Junior Men took to the track for what was to be just another sprint every 10 laps, slow and sprint with 2 to go, then slow and so on to the finish...... that was as far from the truth as you can get. At the whistle, the attacks started. The riders never gave up, with laps being taken by all the riders in the Division. In the end it took over 90 minutes to tally the points, talk to the riders to get their version of what went on, and to declare a winner. The best Junior only race at the FCV since we opened in 2005. Many of these racers will be competing at Road and Track Nationals later in the summer.

The results of the racing do not tell the whole story. During the racing Sunday, 9 FCV Track records fell in many divisions. In the Cadet 2km TT, 8 seconds was taken off the previous track best time.